Our Story

YOOHOPP was first imagined in the lead up to Christmas 2014.

A group of us were bemoaning that, in the lead up to the festive season, we wanted to buy our presents on our local high streets, whilst pre-selecting the products in the luxury of our own homes. Click and collect existed but retailers could not combine their products on a single site that could be adapted to represent any high street in the country. It was impossible to shop for products that we wanted amongst all stores in our place and to choose from them all. As a consequence, we all admitted that we sometimes took the risk of home delivery and found ourselves disappointed at the results – we normally missed the deliveryman or ended up needing to return the item.

Say, for example, we wanted to click and collect a dress for our wife or girlfriend, or a shirt for our husband or boyfriend. First we would have to know each retailer in my town centre; next we would have to know which sold the item we wanted to buy; and then we would have to laboriously search them one by one until we chose the one we wanted…..or lost the will to search any further!

In early 2015, we talked first to four of the most innovative towns and cities that we could have found anywhere in the country – Nottingham, Ipswich, Ilford and Southend. Not the line up that you may suspect but all very different and, as we found, all keen to lead the way with a new shopping experience for their customers.

Next, we talked to some of the country’s leading retail names. They seemed to love the idea that we could create a location-based click and collect offering that would bring together all of their products alongside those of other high street brands, even those local independents who may not actually have an on-line presence of their own.

After 10 months of round-the-clock working, YOOHOPP was launched. It will always be the first truly aggregated shopping experience for those of us who want to shop first and then visit.

It really was our high street, but not as we knew it……...it has become the future of retailing and the best thing to happen to our town and city centres for decades.

Today it has hundreds of retailers and millions of products. Customers now find it the easiest and most pleasurable way to search the destination of their choice, to buy the products that they want, and to ensure that their purchases are there when they choose to collect.